Hand Grenade

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT HAND GRENADE - PAGE 4

LAKE PARK Visitor's hand grenade forces firefighters to flee Palm Beach County firefighters evacuated Station 68 for about three hours Friday after a man brought in a hand grenade, authorities said. The Sheriff's Office blocked traffic along Dixie Highway near the station, at 1000 Park Ave. Freight trains on the nearby FEC lines also were delayed from about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fire-Rescue services were not affected, Capt. Don DeLucia said. Authorities were not able to immediately determine whether the grenade was armed, but the sheriff's bomb squad seized the grenade for disposal.

The man was in the car for less than two minutes when he pulled out a hand grenade. He had been carrying it, like an apple, in a little red shopping bag. He smiled. The other passengers winced. "If you don't pull the pin, it won't explode," he explained calmly. The grenade was not, apparently, a threat but the man's way of establishing that he was, as he claimed, a member of the "resistance," the forces in Iraq about which little is known except that they keep killing anyone associated with the U.S.-led occupation and are making the U.S. presence in Iraq very dangerous and difficult.

Nery Fadden believed her new boss when he told her the Vietnam souvenir grenade on his desk was armed. But after she and her nervous co-workers called the police, the only thing that blew up was Fadden`s job. She was blamed for the call and fired about an hour after the police seized the grenade and found it harmless. "I got fired because I didn`t want to work with a live grenade in the office," said Fadden, of Sunrise. "He said not to pull the pin on it because if we did, we`d all be blown to bits.

When it rained the day of my 4-year-old daughter`s birthday party, I did not panic. Had it rained the day of my 6-year-old son`s party, I would have. Fundamentally, I believe a herd of rampaging boys could inflict far more damage upon my house than a gaggle of girls wearing party dresses. Like the family pets, boys belong in the back yard. On the face of it, giggling girls are easier to handle than stampeding boys. I can talk my daughter into going anywhere, for example, if I let her wear her party shoes.

A commemorative flag arrived at Marty Chase's house last month from Washington, D.C. Accompanying the flag, which had flown over the U.S. Capitol, was a letter sent by a New Jersey congressman, who wrote Chase, "Your judgment under fire during the Vietnam conflict saved the lives of countless brave warfighters. " The flag is the much-delayed thank you for an unusual form of heroism: Chase, a munitions expert working for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, developed a new type of grenade — then advised the military not to use it. The suburban Boynton Beach man was happy to have the recognition, even though it came 42 years after the fact.

DAVIE -- Two houses were evacuated on Monday after a man found a hand grenade in a wooded area and carried it home, police said. Bomb experts, however, later determined that the device was inert, police said. Bob Shaw, 24, of the 4900 block of Southwest 61st Avenue, found the Mark II Pineapple grenade Monday evening in a shack in a wooded area near his house, police spokeswoman Chris Murray said. Shaw carried the World War II or Korean War vintage device home, put it down in his driveway and called police, Murray said.

PEMBROKE PINES -- About eight people were evacuated from a warehouse complex for 1 1/2 hours on Wednesday after a worker found two modified hand grenades inside a box of ammunition that had been stored inside one of the buildings, police said. Experts from the Broward Sheriff`s Office Bomb and Arson unit removed the explosives, then sealed off the storage site at University Self Storage, 8321 Pines Blvd., police and fire officials said. Police said the grenades could have been detonated.

HOLLYWOOD -- Bomb experts on Thursday removed a live explosive resembling a World War II grenade from the lawn of a doctor`s office. Police evacuated three businesses and three homes near the intersection of North 70th Terrace and Taft Street and blocked off traffic in the area for about three hours until the explosive was removed from the grass in front of Dr. Ram Maharajh`s office at 7071 Taft St. "It appears to be a sophisticated attempt at an...

Two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded Tuesday afternoon in Kabul when a teen-age boy, later identified as an Afghan Islamic militant, threw a grenade into their jeep in a crowded central market. The soldiers and their assistant, who were not identified, were rushed to a hospital operated by the International Security Assistance Force, the foreign peacekeeping unit that patrols Kabul. Lt. Tina Kroske, a U.S. military spokeswoman at Bagram air base north of the city, said that one suffered injuries to the head and "in the lower extremities," while the second had shrapnel wounds in his lower right leg. The incident was the first attack on U.S. soldiers in the Afghan capital since U.S. military operations in Afghanistan began 14 months ago. There are about 12,000 U.S. troops in the country.